Page 107 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 27 November 2012
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a few weeks—that would make it just about four weeks that the campaign has been launched—there have been already more than 9,000 nominations through that campaign from people saying what they like about Canberra. Some of those suggestions will be no surprise—things like the four beautiful seasons, great sporting, the great environment we live in and yes, it might come as a surprise to Mr Hanson, there is even feedback about our superb health facilities. Early next year, as a community, we will get to vote on what we believe are the 100 best things about Canberra, with the top 100 announced in time for our birthday in March.
Mr Smyth made mention of the first part of the centenary program that has been launched, and I think that does give you a taste of what the year will be. I think one of the challenges for the centenary team has been trying to create a program for an entire year. Most festivals happen over a weekend. At the most, they happen over 10 days. What the centenary team have been charged with is finding something for everyone, from very small community events to large-scale events that compete on the international stage, and running them over, perhaps, 40 weekends. It is on a very modest budget, and I do not think that has been a well-understood challenge more broadly. But I think they have done an incredible job. The first volume is testament to that. The second volume will come out early next year.
I think part of what we have also tried to do through the program—and it has been a very conscious decision of Robyn Archer as the creative director—is not only look, as a part of our requirements with the commonwealth funding, to recognise Canberra as the nation’s capital and look at how that is presented nationally. Robyn Archer has done a lot of work travelling around Australia, spreading the message of the centenary. I have done what I can through COAG channels as well and will continue to do that—and Canberra is the nation’s capital—and make sure that that is presented.
But it is also very much about our city, who we are, the things that we treasure, the organisations that are the social fabric of our city, the young artists who would find it difficult to compete in larger events in the early stages of their career but who will get a chance to showcase what they can do through some of the support they have been given. Robyn Archer has made it very clear—and it is a decision that I have supported—that what she would like to see happen when the centenary year is over is that many of the supports that have been provided through the centenary program actually continue and that it is a much more lasting legacy about our city.
The community initiatives fund, which has supported a number of programs which Ms Berry has talked about, again, is a testament to that decision of Robyn Archer, from small cake decorating to car rallies, to dancing weekends that will be on, I think, nearly every weekend at the Albert Hall when it is available. We will all see that sort of social infrastructure being invested in.
We will have the national arboretum. It is an important centenary project and it was a visionary project that was supported by Jon Stanhope at a time when nobody else supported it. I think it is a shame that Mr Stanhope was not there to see 4,500 people on the side of the hill, in the amphitheatre, for that voices in the forest, to see a program that he championed and that was fought ferociously by those opposite and
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